This is the funniest reaction I’ve seen so far to the fake black lady incident: 
I saw the Mad Max reboot today. Jaysus, it was dreadful. Zero character development. Insipid plot. Grunts and screams excluded, the dialog would fit on half a page. I have no idea why the critics are all gaga over it.
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sharl
Danielle Henderson’s recent Twitter timeline is a hoot.
It took me a couple seconds to process this thing she retweeted (the photo is the key; poor/not-really-poor BW…).
She also co-authored something on this at her home website. It appears that Black folk, and many folks in general, are still scratching their heads trying to process this bizarre story.
Walker
They are gaga over it because it is a powerful action movie whose dialog can fit on one page. It is a masterclass in visual (as opposed to narrative) storytelling. I understand if it is not your thing, but it is ver good at what it is.
redshirt
Grunts and Screams 303: The space of the animal in the digital age
kc
My AC isn’t cooling my house & I’m in SC.
Help me, Jesus.
Gaffa
The critics are gaga over it because it’s one of the best movies of the 21st Century.
It’s a master class in composition, action, editing, direction, choreography, acting, and set dressing. Charlize Theron should win an Oscar for Best Actress for Furiosa; her haunted eyes are 90% of the dialogue of the movie, and that’s all that the movie needs.
No character development? Both Furiosa and Nux have a full character arc. Insipid plot? It’s simple, basic, and has tons of backstory, but it’s all shown, not said.
sharl
@kc: Aw geez, I’m sorry to hear that. Is the AC unit under-performing, or is it just overwhelmed by the weather?
bargal20
And with that dimwitted review of Mad Max: Fury Road, my regard for anything Betty Cracker says is reduced by 50%.
MobiusKlein
MadMax should have been 20 minutes shorter. Other than that, fab action flick
kc
@sharl:
Thank you! I think it’s underperforming. I thought the house would cool off once the sun went down, but no.
The dang thing is only 5 years old.
bargal20
@MobiusKlein: Why should Mad Max have been shorter? Honestly, I don’t see where you could point to 20 minutes that weren’t necessary to the story. That film’s as tight as they come
redshirt
If you live in a hot climate, you should have a geothermal AC system. Sink a well 500 feet down – voila! 55 degrees F, cold air pumped into your house for the cost of a fan system.
cmorenc
BETTY, betty, betty. Mad Max is a GUY movie. We don’t need no stinkin’ dialogue or character development, so long as there’s non-stop adrenaline-rush action!
:=)
AxelFoley
So…Russia and China crack the documents Snowden stole (and Greenwald aided and abetted):
http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2015/06/13/russia-china-got-snowden-files.html?via=twitter_page
Defend this shit, Cole and the rest of you Snowden/Greenwald supporters.
sharl
Betty, did you think the new Mad Max would be significantly different than earlier films of that genre, based on the reviews you read?
I haven’t seen it, and I’ve only read a couple reviews, but my impression is that if you didn’t like that overall genre, you might not like this movie either. In other words, while it still (apparently) falls within the Mad Max canon, so to speak, it is a significantly new direction to be taken for that kind of movie.
I liked the original Mad Max, as I do many films of that kind – as long as they don’t go all Transformers-like in writhing confusion and chaos (to my old guy brain), I’m good to go – so I’m expecting to like this as well, once I get around to seeing it.
Tiny Tim
The new Mad Max wasn’t really for me, but it was brilliant in its own way.
Tommy
@redshirt: I don’t know what geothermal AC system is. I can live in a place where it is 100 many days in a row. I’d like some education here. Looking to upgrade things .
Full metal Wingnut
@cmorenc: Guy movie? Seeing it was my wife’s idea. Though I didn’t complain.
redshirt
@Tommy: It’s simple. You sink a well about 500 feet down, where it is pretty much always 55 degrees F. A large fan is used to circulate air down that 500 foot well where the air is naturally chilled and then returned up to your house then circulated through a central air system. So you get cold air pumped through your house for the cost of the electricity to run the fans circulating the air. This saves a good deal of money since you don’t have to cool the air on your own tab.
Except also it’s water.
sharl
@AxelFoley: You don’t have to wait for Cole to respond – Greenwald already is:
Me, I have no idea, but there’s a response – make of it what you will – with a promise of more to come.
I would be a lot happier if our own intel community would spend more resources on defensive IT security measures, so we didn’t give Federal government employees’ PII and security clearance information to the Chinese. It appears that at least it wasn’t young Master Snowden who made off with that information.
Tommy
@Full metal Wingnut: I am watching Game of Thrones. Peopled freaked out at the rape scene of the last show. Said they won’t watch the show any more. They burned a little girl at the stake. Very hard to watch.
srv
@sharl: If Snowden taught us anything, it’s to believe whatever the gov’t says.
Hungry Joe
Just got back from “Mad Max.” There could have been even LESS — dialog. (I was sort of editing as I watched.) I thought I was pretty much burned out on this kind of thing, but I thoroughly enjoyed it as an expression of pure style.
And I came away thinking, gosh, it must be SO COOL to be a Pole Boy. (You sorta had to be there.)
Hobbes
@AxelFoley: Anonymous sources from an unnamed ‘western intelligence agency’ making unverifiable claims that both the Chinese and the Russians have independently cracked the encryption, published two days after a report into the UK’s terrorism legislation recommended laws be changed to limit the intelligence agencies.
Seems legit.
MobiusKlein
@bargal20: just my opinion. I was looking for story closure when there was 25 min of film to go.
jl
I really like the Lady Cracker’s idea of open chainsaw carry she put out earlier today. That is all I have for this open thread.
redshirt
Nuclear codes should go free, man. No restrictions on information!
sharl
@sharl: Took a mini-tour of some of my semi-regular twitter haunts where IT security and NatSec are known to regularly duke it out over stuff like Snowden/Greenwald and whatnot. At this point there seems to be more smoke than light regarding this Sunday Times piece.
For an idea of how the
battleyelling lines are currently drawn, scroll down to see the back-and-forth that follows this tweet by a UC-Berkeley IT security researcher:Like having squid ink squirted into your eyes while trying to read 8-pt font.
Thus, ergo, and therefore: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Peale
@Hungry Joe: it can’t be good to keep spraying chrome paint in your mouth, though.
divF
Apropos of nothing: A link on the sfgate web site reads:
Is there anyone besides me who keeps wanting to read this as “Bohemian scandals”?
NotMax
Holy moley, Lousiana sucks donkey nether parts.
A mind is a terrible thing to
wastewarp.ruemara
@cmorenc: I’m a woman. I loved that movie.
Betty, Betty, Betty. It’s ok. We’re still pals.
ruemara
@sharl: My problem with Greenwald et al on the information should be free side, is that most of their articles are “THE GOVERNMENT HAS THE ABILITY TO STEAL YOUR PIE RECIPES & MOLEST YOUR DOG (we have not yet found the evidence that this is happening)”. And that’s about as bargle as anon sources. WikiLeaks edits, you can’t really make a doc without a POV, so why tell me to be critical of an institution, then expect me to not be critical of you too?
Keith P.
Mad Max was good for several reasons. Very well made – those are extremely complex car stunts, phenomenal color composition, and just imagery in general. The world was a fully-realized one with depth that the movie only hints at; my mind goes off thinking about the full world of the Wasteland. The villain is epic. Immortan Joe should be on lists with Darth Vader IMO…everything scene he was in was just cool or weird.
And then, there are the vehicles. The movie just keeps outdoing itself with them. The spiked vehicles (“WITNESS MEEEE!!”)…the sandstorm….the Doof-Mobile….Bigfoot…the Bullet Farmer…the pole cats….gas-spitting. It was just one “Wow!” scene after another.
David Koch
The Sunday Times is the same newspaper who printed the infamous Downing Street Memo on how Bush cooked the books with wholesale lies to scare monger congress and the american public to manufacture public and congressional consent to invade Iraq.
Everyone in the blogosphere hailed the Sunday Times for their integrity and courage for uncovering and publishing the truth.
Now that the Sunday Times print something that is critical of one of their heroes, the vaunted liberal blogosphere is going to trash them. Bravo. Clap louder.
sharl
@ruemara: Yeah, at his worst, Greenwald does the very thing you say. Best you not tweet legitimate criticism at him though, lest you want a bunch of egg accounts nipping at your heels!
Having said that, Greenwald can be a very good critic, with lots of links and backup, when the topic is amenable to that kind of treatment. To this day I still occasionally link to his excellent and brutal criticism of ABC’s Brian Ross from his pre-Snowden days at Salon, calling Ross out for pimping the phony story that Saddam was the source of anthrax attacks in the U.S. shortly after the 9/11 attacks. In response to Greenwalds requests for evidence or outing of the source that gave him that lie for propagation, Ross has never offered a response.
But something always bugged me about his writing, even at his old blog where he wrote before he joined Salon. Someone – I think a commenter here, actually – put his finger on it. When Greenwald has a case he really feels strongly about, but for which he doesn’t have much evidence, he runs the reader through literary loops, switchbacks, and hills-n-hollers, finally coming to a confusing end. Clearly a technique that a rather desperate trial lawyer might use, but antithetical to the very way a journalist should write. I had hoped someone would have mentored him in the ways of proper journalism when he went to The Guardian, but by then he had become a #Brand, as they say, and in any event I suspect his ego would have rendered him a rather recalcitrant student. Damn shame though; Al Giordano has been doing advocacy journalism over at his Narco News site for years, without violating basic journalism practices and tenets (though he’s more into training younger journos these days, I think).
Eh, whatever. If nothing else, he provides some questions for journalists and Congressional oversight committees to ask our intelligence community. I’m thinking folks like Wyden; over the years Feinstein has been totally captured by the IC, unfortunately. The IC will lie sometimes of course, sometimes for good reason, other times…not so much. But they should at least have to be responsible to someone.
Major Major Major Major
Attempted mugging(?) on my way home on a fairly well lit and trafficked area.
Rule one of Krav Maga: don’t get in a fight.
So I slow down as I’m behind this guy muttering to himself. Then he stops and waits until I pass him. At this point I’ve removed my headphones so I can hear when he starts rushing up on me.
Rule 1.5: if you can’t kick them in the balls, find a way to kick them in the balls.
Rule 2: RUN!
So my training has been useful I guess. I wanted to hammer my thesis in a little harder but he had a buddy who’d been tailing me.
opiejeanne
@Tommy: Thanks for that spoiler. Now I don’t need to watch it.
sharl
@Major Major Major Major: YIKES! Glad you’re OK. Had a gun pulled on me a couple times; totally ruins your evening.
Major Major Major Major
@sharl: the big tell was when he started saying “next time I see you I’ll shoot you in the face” so, well, that’s not a person with a gun.
opiejeanne
@sharl: Yikes!
opiejeanne
@Major Major Major Major: Wow.
sharl
@David Koch:
So you would ignore the fact that Fred Hiatt’s WaPo banged the war drum so loudly leading up to our Glorious Iraq Adventure™, instead waxing nostalgic for the WaPo which exposed Watergate?
And would you ignore Bill Keller’s NYT for allowing Judith Miller to be Cheney’s propagandist, as well as his pre-election (2004) suppression of stories developed by his own reporters of our IC conducting illegal domestic spying, instead waxing nostalgic for the NYT that published Daniel Ellsberg’s Pentagon Papers?
Just sayin’…
Betty Cracker
@sharl: I enjoyed the original movies — didn’t think they were great art, but they were fun and entertaining. Maybe the hype ruined Fury Road for me. It was visually stunning, and the cinematography was impressive, but it was a mindless, two-hour car chase to nowhere, IMO.
Major Major Major Major
@Betty Cracker: you went into a mad max movie not expecting a mindless two-hour car chase to nowhere?
cokane
@sharl: Well said, I’d like to add onto this.
Greenwald’s biggest problem, and why it’s hard for me to take him seriously, is that he’s never adapted to being a journalist, but likes to call himself a journalist or even an “investigative journalist”, a term that carries a certain cachet in the biz. This wouldn’t be awful by itself, but he has basically set himself up as some kind of referee on all things journalism now. Notice his slamming the use of anonymous sources.
But if you read his actual articles, he rarely interviews… anybody. He rarely has any kind of sources, anonymous or otherwise. He does nearly zero leg work as an actual journalist but then wants to go around and crow about how the NYT or other major workhouses are doing a shit job. It’s insufferable. And he regularly violates journalistic principles in his own work, exagerrating stories, failing to provide comment from the target of a story, getting technical details wrong — failings he lambasts others for.
He’s really never evolved beyond his pre Salon blogger style.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@sharl:
I’m not an expert on the subject, so take this for what it’s worth, but I’m increasingly coming to the conclusion that there isn’t really any way to safeguard information that is on a widely accessible network, like the internet. That isn’t to say that no one should be trying to defend their information, but there will be breaches. No matter how good the security is, there’s always a chance that the information will be accessed illegally and then disseminated. And that possibility means that there will be near constant instances of it.
So, I think that we need to put a lot more resources into mitigation and how to minimize the damage done to people after breaches happen.
Betty Cracker
@Major Major Major Major: I like a little story arc and character development with my mindless, two-hour car chases.
Gaffa
@Betty Cracker:
But there was a story arc and character development in Fury Road. Miller just wasn’t going to use words to give them to you (he’s a huge fan of Hitchcock’s theory that a film should be basically completely understandable even if you don’t understand a word of what the actors are saying).
Gene108
The striking thing about the Mad Max franchise is the bigger the budget the more post-apocalyptic the setting gets.
After Fury Road, I saw the original Mad Max and in it Max was in an actual city, with actual roads, restaurants, houses with electricity, running water and TV sets having shows on in the background. Society was breaking down, from whatever nameless disaster affected civilization, but it still existed.
Fury Road was just over the top post-appocalyptic, which I found interesting that they would make such a big change from earlier movies and basically CGI in the entire background, rather than shoot it in rural Australia like the other movies.
As far as character development, they actually developed the reason why people would become Immortan Joe’s horde of War Boys and that these were scared kids following the only leader around, which I found to be a nice touch.
Enjoyed the movie and felt it lived up to the hype.
Also, Spy is very funny and worth seeing.
chopper
I liked the new MM movie but I can understand why some people would find it tedious. not everyone’s into the over-the-top gratuitous action shit. the car chase scene from Bullitt is a masterwork of filming and editing work but some people just aren’t into sitting through a car chase scene that long.
one thing that people and critics like about it is that they did the whole thing IRL as opposed to on a computer with only a few exceptions like Theron’s arm. and you could tell. it made the movie a hundred times better IMO.
chopper
@chopper:
come to think of it the background work was pretty computer heavy. the stunts tho and the vehicles were all for real tho.
FortGeek
@kc: If there’s an outdoor unit, can you hear it running? If it’s not, you might be lucky and only have an ant problem. I have that problem with mine every once in a while. That’ll be reasonably cheap to fix.
Amir Khalid
Rachel Dolezal has four adopted black siblings. Having learned that, I believe that her passing as black all these years is a manifestation of some form of sibling rivalry.
bago
With respect to MM, the story was shown in the acting, the confusion, and if you look at the three main characters, they are Furiosa, Nux, and tertiarily Max. He’s just along for the 2 hour ride. Of course Max doesn’t have much of an arc, he’s a cipher. Furiosa goes from running to fighting, Nux finds redemption with his sacrifice, turning away from Valhalla for mercy, and Max is Max. More of a setting than a character.
FortGeek
@chopper: Per the director, there’s very little CGI anywhere (about 20% of the film, according to IMDb). Most of the terrain’s real, in the Namib Desert, Namibia.
Botsplainer
@Gene108:
Laughed my ass off at the whole thing, particularly Statham being a parody of every character he ever played.
Joel
I’m fully expecting to hate Mad Max when I do see it. For one, I’ve hated most action movies that I’ve seen past my childhood. For another, the critical mass seems like a “mile wide, inch deep” phenomenon. And lastly, I’m getting Waterworld vibes from it.
msdc
@Gene108:
Fury Road was shot in the Namib desert. They didn’t shoot it in rural Australia because rainfall turned their desert a lovely shade of green.
Joel
@Tommy: you sink pipes in the earth and recirculate heat through there. It keeps the temperature a steady 57. Cost outlay is 50 grand with 1/3 covered by subsidy.
gogol's wife
Wow, it looks as if mentioning Mad Max is like mentioning gun control. All sorts of new nyms come out of the woodwork to make passionate arguments.
evodevo
@Gene108: With that movie genre, I’m always the practical party pooper – wondering where their gasoline comes from, for instance, if it’s a post-apocalypse…….collapsed societies can’t refine crude oil – see Iraq for example…..you need engineers, infrastructure, equipment, ELECTRICITY, storage facilities, etc. But that would be asking too much. And, I guess, solar-powered crazy vehicles wouldn’t be as noisy and glamorous.
ThresherK
@Joel: Waterworld?
Just to tangent, (and this is only about me, not you): I thought Waterworld’s main failing was, literally, costing too much. Along with Ishtar and such, our popular press couldn’t stop reviewing the backstory and budget, making it nigh unto impossible to actually review the movie.
PS I’ve read a metric shite-tonne on expensive moviemaking, and from what I’ve learned, a century ago commoners like us weren’t really delving into the incredible cost overruns for D.W. Griffith’s Intorolerance, or a decade later, MGM’s silent Ben Hur. I guess “We are all Variety now”.
(PS Is Variety still published?)
Joel
@gogol’s wife: native advertising?
ThresherK
@evodevo: wondering where their gasoline comes from
Not to spoil things, but wasn’t there a classic, memorable Wile E. Coyote “Free bird seed” trap in the first Mad Max, involving a jerry can of petrol?
Immanentize
Not a new Nym, but I do want to add something to the MM comments. As plot, Fury Road just shocked me — in a real good way. It has been said that there are only two narratives: leaving home and going home. The first MM was a leaving home story for sure. Dark, forced to leave home. We used to call it ‘Why Max is mad.’ Road Warrior was going home story. Not for Max, but for the whole bunch of Swedes in the desert(? What were thay about?). Thunderdome, i guess was a who’s at home story. I really didn’t like it at all (but it was a leaving home for the kids?
Fury Road — when the leaving home story was dashed, when the quest was destroyed — they went home. It was amazing. When they turned around to go back it was such an uncomfortable feeling because basic narrative structures were upended and the whole trip had to be replaced in my narrative fixed mind. I liked it. And it looked great too. My 14 year old son who is super critical of CGI appreciated how real the action was.
2 cents
Gene108
@evodevo:
In Fury Road there was Gas Town and Bullet Town, so I assume some level of technical knowledge still exists. Immortan Joe ruled Water Town.
In theory Max is a cop (not sure how much Fury Road keeps with the earlier stories, in terms of continuity) who left the Highway patrol and went off into the Forbidden Zone / Wasteland, so somewhere out there some remnants of civilization should exist.
Brachiator
For those who liked Mad Max, and that includes me, a little fun (mild spoiler):
If you’ve watched Mad Max: Fury Road, you probably noticed that the war boys chasing the protagonists throughout the movie would spray their mouths with some kind of silver paint before attempting a suicide mission.
Well, surely looking to impress the their evil leader Immortan Joe, hardcore Mad Max fans pretty much took over the reviews for Wilton’s silver food coloring spray on Amazon and transformed it into a forum for the diseased “War Boys” from the movie.
They incorporated quotes from the movie, and tributes to the War Boys’ roles in making Mad Max and Imperator Furiosa’s life a living hell.
http://www.foodbeast.com/news/mad-max-baking-spray/
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@AxelFoley:
Ugh.
In related news, the German government has determined that the information about the US government tapping Merkel’s phone lacks credible evidence.
So there’s that.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Gene108:
Fury Road was shot in rural Nabilia, while my wife was over there.
Frankensteinbeck
You missed it, but the movie was heavy in both character development and plot. They were told in a nonstandard way, with very few words, which is probably why you missed it. Every one of the escaped slave girls goes through her own arc of fear and doubt and how she deals with it – some giving up, some becoming hard, some finding new hope, every one individual. Furiosa’s arc is front center, and although she changes the least, it’s an arc of discovering the complexity of her character as she moves from courage, through desperate to despair, and back to victory. I didn’t like Nux’s arc, but it was certainly a complex discussion of youth and the development of morality. Max is so quiet, his arc is hard to see, but it’s certainly there. He goes from ruled by a psychosis (he hallucinates regularly!) of selfish determination to survive, to regaining some measure of the man he once was that was driven out by failure to protect others – but only some, which is why he walks away at the end. It’s still easier for him to fight than to find any internal peace. Hell, the bad guys get a little development, revealing the structure of Immortan Joe’s family and the obsessions that rule it – specifically, family. If Joe treats women as things, it’s because he wants children, not sex.
Just an overview of the character development took so long that I’ll leave the plot to someone else, for once.
@Gene108:
As people have noted, not CGI. One of the most amazing things about the movie is that the director wanted the absolute minimum of CGI. One Hell of a lot of the things you would think are fake, are real, like every vehicle and the guy with the (functional!) flamethrower guitar. The Badass Warrior Grannies did their own stunts!
Rommie
Oh no, Sepp Blatter may be reconsidering resigning. Maximum Troll move if he stays on…
brent
@Frankensteinbeck:
Right. Well said. Whether one likes the movie or not, the complaint that it lacks plot or character development seems especially wrongheaded to me. To my sensibility, the movie is pretty much ALL plot and character development with some astonishing stunt work thrown in. MMTR is actually quite dense as well as being a rather unique visual spectacle.
TomG
@ThresherK: You are probably thinking of an early scene in Mad Max 2 (The Road Warrior), where Max is hoping to grab some petrol from a autogyro with a snake on it, and the Gyrocopter Pilot pops out of a hidden hole nearby and takes Max hostage (or TRIES to…).
SRW1
@Rommie:
Don’t care much about Mad Max, but Mad Sepp is about to get my blood boiling.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo):
Derp. Namibia.
JimV
I’ve seen “Fury Road” twice and would see it again while it’s on the big screen. As somebody else mentioned, the dialog is in Charlize Theron’s eyes – e.g. when Mad Max first catches up to the War Rig with his trademark sawed-off shot gun and she’s waiting for her best chance to attack and take him down.
It’s not what we menfolk call a “chick flick” so my nephews and grandnephews didn’t bring their spousal units, out of consideration for their finer sensibilities. After all, the main message of “Fury Road” is that men will destroy the world and women will try to nurture civilization back into existence – but the men will have fun doing it. What a lovely day!
Brachiator
@Frankensteinbeck: Good to see that this thread is still going on a little bit.
You’re right that the story in Fury Road is developed in a non standard way, although I also can see why people did not like the film and wanted a traditional story. Spoilers ahead.
I really enjoyed the audacity of Miller revealing more characters and story while on the move. So people pop up from hidden compartments or jump onto the war rig or join the chase. And with each new addition, the character’s relationship to others and their significance to the narrative is clearly laid out by his or her actions and decisions.
Also, the chase has been central to movies since movies were invented, from Keystone Kops shorts and Buster Keaton’s The General to Convoy or Gone in 60 Seconds to the Fast and Furious franchise.
shell
@Tommy: On this one TV website, there are still people freaking out about that one scene…I guess they’ve gotten caught up with their DVR.
J R in WV
@Tommy:
@redshirt:
You have it a little simplified and leave out the interesting parts. What they do varies between people with a large flat lot and people with horizontal limits. If you have a large area to work with you can trench instead of drilling a deep well, which is cheaper to start with.
Also, typically they use a standard heat pump system, but instead of using ambient air to absorb or provide energy, they use the ground – specifically ground water – as a source of heat in the winter and a dump for heat in the summer. Thus your home HVAC unit works with a constant 55 degree heat sink rather than trying to cool your house into 110 degree air in the summer, and heat you house from 35 degree air in the winter time.
It is much more efficient. I know about this from researching when we built our house, and from hiring a guy who’s specialty is geo-heat installation to do earth moving when I built a big shop. He did bulldozer work when not installing home HVAC systems, and talked non-stop about his heating business in an attempt to sell me a system for the shop.
I put in ordinary electrical heat, as I don’t really keep it 70 degrees all winter, just in the 40s unless I’m actually working out in the garage, doing a lube job or whatever. But in a house it is a great idea, as your energy cost drops a ton. Up front installation is pretty high, though, you need the well/trench as well as water circulation hardware and a heat exchanger into that water instead of the big fan-driven heat exchanger into air most AC systems use.
Hope this makes sense, enough detail for bystanders, etc…
Betty Cracker
@gogol’s wife: You noticed that too? And like those discussions about gun control where the bat signal gets lit, it doesn’t seem possible to have a valid difference of opinion. Either you love the precious or you hate the constitution and are too dumb to understand the difference between an automatic and semiautomatic!
One thing the critics did get right about Fury Road was that it was bold to relegate Max to almost a sidekick role and focus on the female empowerment arc (shallow though it was, IMO). Kinda makes the heavy mansplaining vibe from a few of the film’s defenders in this thread ironic, though.
Hard as it is to believe, fellas, it’s actually possible for someone to grasp a filmmaker’s intent WRT characters and storylines (which wasn’t exactly subtle, BTW) and still find it lacking in humor, humanity and meaning. Even with a lady-brain, this level of cogitation is possible!
J R in WV
I got into moderation for talking about HVAC ?? [email protected][email protected]!
What’s goofy about HVAC, WordPress!??
ed_finnerty
@AxelFoley: @AxelFoley: why did you have such sh***y controls in place that he was able to steal them in the first place
kc
@FortGeek:
Yeah, the fan is running- it seems to be running fine. Just not cooling.
Where would the ants be?
J R in WV
@kc:
Sounds to me like you have had a refrigerant leak, which means a tech will trouble-shoot to find and repair the leak, and then refill the system with whatever modern refrigerant your particular system uses. Or else your compressor isn’t pumping any more.
In the meantime, either way you could turn off the system to save some electricity and open your windows and use fans to move air around. Like when you visited your grandma in the old days. If you’re an old like me. The downside to that is usually humidity, which we have too much of here.
Frankensteinbeck
@Betty Cracker:
…is factually wrong. That you didn’t like it is an opinion. That the plot is insipid is just barely acceptable as an opinion, although there are objective writing standards and it meets them – exceeds them, because the almost-no-dialog way of communicating plot and character development is a difficult technical task to meet. God damn, is it hard to create character arcs in the middle of non-stop action. I’ve tried.
When did I imply that your being a woman has anything to do with this whatsoever? You made an incorrect statement. Whether you liked it or not, whether you were touched by it or not, the movie’s story and especially character development are a demonstration of exceptional writing skill.
PaulW
@redshirt:
I would attend that film class.
The reasons why Fury Road is so awesome:
1) Conveys the entire narrative as a series of action sequences that essentially seam into each other as one big sequence.
2) There is unusually effective character development even with the lack of prolonged dialog or exposition.
3) The filmmakers (Director Miller in particular) come into this with the expectation that the audience already knows this ‘Verse – the post-apocalypse where fuel (and now water and even blood) are commodities fought over by violent gangs – and so can jump right into the action without excessive rehashing.
4) The camerawork is stunning. They went with a center-third framing in nearly every shot – where the eye is forced to train on the very center of the widescreen – and yet still packed in activity on the edges in a way that doesn’t cause confusion. You’ll notice there’s almost no shaky-cam. In the shots where they didn’t use the center-third (such as a shot of the Doof guitarist leading Immortan Joe’s war party with a guitar solo) they still have the eye trained towards the center while losing none of the imagery across the entire screen.
5) the action sequences themselves do not seem entirely computer-generated (although a lot of computer work went into editing everything together), giving them a fresh, real-life impact that few modern action movies even attempt.
kc
@J R in WV:
I find that houses built after the advent of central AC weren’t really designed to be cooled by circulating air through open windows, unfortunately.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Betty Cracker:
I wouldn’t say that it’s a “lady-brain” thing — it’s a visual storytelling vs dialogue storytelling thing. I prefer dialogue storytelling myself, but it’s perfectly valid to respond to visual storytelling (and I know plenty of ladies who do).
For instance, some people luuuurve Terrence Malick’s films, but he leaves me cold, because he’s primarily a visual storyteller and I just get bored. It sounds like “Fury Road” is an attempt to push visual storytelling as far as possible, and people who prefer that are going to like it. Talk to someone who loved “Prometheus” sometime and it will probably be because they saw deep meaning in the visuals that was belied by the dialogue and plot.
gogol's wife
@Betty Cracker:
I’ve never seen anything quite like it concerning a movie. Maybe Putin’s trolls got sidetracked.
Betty Cracker
@Frankensteinbeck:
It’s called “hyperbole.” It means exaggeration for effect, and it’s not meant to be taken literally. To clarify: In my opinion, the character development in the film was inadequate.
“A few of the film’s defenders” =/= you. I was thinking of the “it’s not a chick flick so you don’t get it” comments. Your particular remarks were/are condescending as hell, but lack overt sexism.
In your opinion, which is more widely shared than mine but not definitive or objectively true. This isn’t climate science.
rikyrah
Question: how many of our spies have been outed and killed because of Snowden?
Just askin’.
Betty Cracker
@Mnemosyne (tablet): I do appreciate visual storytelling. One of my favorite films ever is Lawrence of Arabia, which has plenty of dialog, but IMO some of the most riveting and meaningful scenes are the shots that wordlessly illustrate the vast emptiness of the landscape, Lawrence’s journey through it and how that parallels his search for meaning. One of the most gripping scenes unfolds without a word at first — just an approaching figure in the distance, obscured by heat mirages.
The cinematography and effects in MM were impressive, but overall it felt hollow to me. The stunt grannies were cool, though.
Gaffa
@Betty Cracker:
First off, I’m not a new commentator. I’ve been here for years (a Balloon Juice reader since the pre-conversion Cole years). I just write maybe once or twice a year at best, because usually I don’t have much to say.
Second off, nobody’s saying that “your ladybrain” was the reason you didn’t get the film (except you). You’re not required to like any film, but claiming a film has no plot or character development when it abundantly does is a Jane Hamsher-like level of false flag flying in talking about a film.
Basically, your hyperbole skills need work if that’s what you’re going for.
And please pick an example of the film’s defender’s here “mansplaining” the meaning of the film to you. Because if you’re now claiming that taking objection to your weak hyperbole is only being done because you’re a woman…well, that’s a surprising amount of butt-hurt for a Balloon Juice front-pager to show based over a movie review.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
Betty, I do recommend this thread for a good hash-out of the story. Like a number of people, I came out of the theater thinking it was a good entry into the Mad Max franchise, went back a second time, and was blown away by all the little things I missed the first time through.
Starting with the finer details of the wives starting to assist in their own rescue, nicely described here.
WaterGirl
@Frankensteinbeck: @PaulW: I wonder if your ability to see character development and narratives where others might not see that so clearly is related to the fact that you guys are writers? (I think!)
J R in WV
@kc:
That’s certainly true of some newer houses, but if you have no A/C then open windows and fans seem like the going option ( the only option, maybe ) until the tech finishes a repair.
We’re fortunate to have windows on all sides of the house, and we can put a big floor fan to work in the other end of the house to pull fresh air into the space where we are. Shade too, and cool air pooling to run down the hollow our house sits in, so in the evenings there is usually cool air drifting down the hillsides.
Good luck with the repair! Just a leak is probably the best case, no expensive compressor to replace… just expensive refrigerant and tech time.
Iowa Old Lady
@Major Major Major Major: So was there plot development and a character arc in your encounter? I’m glad you’re all right.
Esme's Mom
Late night thread for most of you, mid-morning slacker Sunday thread for me. Now I really want to see this movie – interesting comments, pro and con, Mel’s not in it, just-retired best (girl)friend is on board – I’m good to go.
FortGeek
@Betty Cracker:
A friend of mine complained about that, but it seems to me that Max was a “link” character in the 2nd and 3rd flicks, kind of like The Hitcher or Crypt Keeper–his job is to get us to the story, where he’s not necessarily the prime character.
Thought it was decent, great vehicle stunts…but didn’t blow my socks off.
FortGeek
@kc: If the fan’s running, it’s not likely to be ants. Might be low on refrigerant.
In the outside unit, there’s a high-voltage relay controlled by the thermostat to power the compressor and fan. Ants can get in between the open contacts when the unit’s not running, then ZAP! get crushed and fried when the unit kicks on. Get enough of them that way, it keeps the relay from working.
But your fan’s running, so the relay should be fine. Hope it’s still a reasonably cheap fix–and a quick one. No AC is pretty harsh even this time of year.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker: WTF? Some of the dumbest initial attacks on the film was that it was not an official guy film because Max had to play second fiddle to a woman. Later, there was considerable debate over whether the movie was officially a feminist film, especially because of the involvement of Eve Ensler in the development of the motivation of the Wives. And of course the name of the female tribe is almost a feminist joke.
Some of the biggest champions and most eloquent critics of the film have been women critics, including Any Nicholson of the Village Voice.
Also, the movie was edited by a woman, the phenomenal Margaret Sixel. No problem with her ladybrain.
As an aside, the most recent episode of the BBC Kermode and Mayo podcast included an email from a woman who was especially touched by the film because the character Furiousa was not defined or limited or particularly singled out because of her physical disability. This person felt this was one of the few times that she had been fully represented in a movie.
Mad Max has its champions because it does not feel like manufactured product in a movie season that has seen a number of disappointments, including the hugely successful but kinda weak Jurassic World.
If anything, the lean narrative of Mad Max reminds me of “Gravity,” which was also criticised by some for a supposedly weak story and insufficient story arcs.
I disagree. Nor do I think that there is any “Goodfellas” diss that chicks just don’t get it.
FortGeek
@Betty Cracker: I don’t remember where I saw it, but one amusing take on “Max” is that it’s just one long “Road Runner” episode.
Brachiator
@FortGeek: But of course, I have also seen Road Runner cartoons accurately described as short kinetic masterpieces. And they are even more wordless than Fury Road, but a viewer can grasp everything that is happening, including the arc of the relationship between the Road Runner and his adversary.
Hell, the punny names in Mad Max are a nod to Wile E. Coyote, who is also given outrageous pseudo Latin scientific names.
gogol's wife
Whatever happened to De gustibus non est disputandum?
Betty Cracker
@Gaffa: I don’t give a crap how often you comment, but your inability to understand the basic points under discussion makes me question the wisdom of replying to you at all. For example, the “mansplaining” thing had nothing to do with one commenter’s apparent misunderstanding of the hyperbole I used in the OP. I explained exactly what I meant by mansplaining (the chick flick comments) right there in the reply you reference, so I know you must have seen it, but you failed to understand it somehow. Based on that, I’m going to bow out of discussing this further with you. It would be pointless.
@WaterGirl: I don’t often mention it here, but I’ve made my living as a writer for more than 20 years now, and I have a degree in English. That doesn’t make me special or anything, but I am generally capable of recognizing character development and narrative.
Brachiator
@gogol’s wife: It went out the window when Bob Dylan went electric.
JimV
I searched for “chick flick” on this thread, and could only find one (mine) that wasn’t a reference to some previous, unspecified comment. So I guess I get the credit. It was a conscious attempt to be funny*. To the extent I meant anything serious, it wasn’t to imply that “lady brains” don’t get it, but rather that women are better people, in general, than men and not as excited by depictions of violence and recklessness. I did not mean to impugn anybody’s taste or brains, except perhaps my own. If I were a better person I probably would have liked “Fury Road” less. But I’m not.
We used to dare each other to see who would jump or dive off the highest part of the bridge into about five or six feet of water when I was a teenager (the record was over 30 feet, I did over 20). I’ve never seen any teenage women doing stuff like that (there probably are some, but it doesn’t seem to be common), so I assume they are wired better. Vive la difference.
* “… not what we menfolk call a chick-flick …” – not funny in a subtly self-deprecating way? Okay, sorry.
lawguy
@AxelFoley: Never mind I just realized this was an open thread.
MaryRC
@Gaffa: The butt-hurt here isn’t coming from Betty.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Betty Cracker:
“Lawrence of Arabia” is a beautiful film, but the visuals don’t carry the burden of the plot the way they do in, say, “Days of Heaven.” As I said, purely visual storytelling like that tends to bore me, but some people do respond to it. It sounds like “Fury Road” is a fairly extreme experiment in purely visual storytelling.
And no one is saying you have to love it — I am the person notorious for finding Stanley Kubrick’s films to be dull (that was me you heard snoring during “2001”). But I don’t think the people defending its storytelling are lying or being macho jerks.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne (tablet): You didn’t like 2001? On,no.
But I agree with your points here and your examples.
I also love Days of Heaven. I went to see it in Westwood with a woman who was a poet. She burst into tears at the power of some of the images and editing.
Brachiator
@JimV: Wow. You’re digging quite a hole for yourself. Might consider stopping before it gets too deep.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Brachiator:
I fell asleep during the Stargate sequence and overall found it dull. I like “Dr. Strangelove” and “Full Metal Jacket,” but overall I find Kubrick slow and boring. Kubrick is my spouse’s personal Jesus so he has a hard time understanding my dislike, but we’ve managed to adjust.
xephyr
Mad Max, the first two were classic, this latest (saw it today) was impressive mainly in terms of being expensive, loud, and predictable, which is enough for many people. As for the critical response? Well, we live in an age of very flexible standards. The opening scene was pretty good though, too bad about that car.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Paths of Glory, slow and boring? And of course, 2001 has a minimum of dialog.
But I understand how Kubrick puts some people off, but usually it is because people find him cold and distancing.
Also, Buster Keaton’s is in the Pantheon. Charlie Chaplin rotates in.
The only time I have drawn a mental line in the sand over a film or director was with a person who hated Children of Paradise.
I think that Kubrick, Truffaut, Renoir, Hitchcock and Kurosawa have permanent spots in my Pantheon of directors. Then, with apologies to Lindsey Graham, Powell and Pressburger, Bergman and others rotate in and out.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
I have every Keaton biography ever published and my oldest cat is named after him, so you have some idea of where I stand. My pantheon is a little odd, but I would say Keaton, Wilder, Lubitsch, Fuller, Ophuls, and Kurosawa are in my top ranks. I don’t bother to put people like Spielberg and Scorsese in my pantheon, because they’re in all right-thinking people’s pantheons, so it’s like saying your favorite book is the Bible. Truffaut is the only New Wave director I can stand. I like Renoir, but prefer Ophuls — few movies can make me cry the way The Earrings of Madame de … did.
mclaren
Critics are gaga over the new Mad Max film, Betty, because America is a sick twisted society that worships pain and torture and loathes pleasure and fears and hates the human body. So in Shithole America, any movie that depicts people being brutalized and killed and maimed and tortured thrills the American public and sends the critics into contortions of ecstasy. Meanwhile, a movie that shows people having fun or engaging in sex gets shunned and reviled and treated as though it the cultural equivalent of Chernobyl.
What else do you expect in a debased hyperpuritanical society like America, where the motto is “no pain, no gain!”?
kc
@J R in WV:
Thanks. I’ve been waiting for several hours for a tech to call me back. Looks like I’m gonna be spending at least one more night in HELL …
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne: There is a shrine to Wilder and Lubitsch in the Pantheon. I respect Ophuls, but he doesn’t quite do it for me.
Brachiator
@mclaren: When was the last time that anyone, anywhere made a good, fun, explicit film about sex.
The rest of your post isn’t even a good parody of bad writing about movies.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
BTW, if you haven’t read Five Came Back yet, I’m about halfway through it (at the recommendation of above spouse). It’s very well-researched and has a lot of great quotes from the five directors profiled (John Ford, William Wyler, John Huston, George Stevens, and Frank Capra).
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne: I have read a number of reviews of this book and have it on my wish list. I’ve read other material on the directors and this time period, and think I’ve seen some of the Capra footage. Yep, definitely on my list to read when I have more time.
Joel
@Mnemosyne (tablet): I hated 2001, too.
My biggest diversion from critics tends to be foreign films (especially French ones). That said, loved Jean de Florette.
Ivan X
For what it’s worth, I thought MMFR was awesome, but not because it had any Big Important Themes or Visual Storytelling or Master Class Teaching or Dialogue Through Eyes.
I have to say that those here declaring the presence of these Big Things in MMFR to be inarguable truths, that only persons of lesser intellect or taste could fail to grasp, sound both pompous and condescending. (That’s, IMO, the “mansplaining” vibe which Betty commented on, because if you combine pompous and condescending with “it’s for dudes” type of comments — which no one did in a single post, but in aggregate it sort of reads that way — then it’s kind of mansplaining.)
I thought MMFR was awesome because for what it was, it succeeded for me: two hours of amazing looking adrenaline in which I was viscerally involved the entire time, and as such I had fun. The fact that, in my opinion, the character development was minor and the plot was minimal and I don’t think the movie had anything all that tremendously important to say in no way interfered with the kinetic thrill, and that was enough for me to enjoy it. YMMV.
(For what it’s worth, I can’t imagine not having seen it in a theater with great sound, where the drums alone provided some of the charge.)
Betty, you’re one of my favorite posters here, but even I had a negative first reaction to your post. MMFR offers kinetic energy and striking visuals and a nutty vibe, but sure, it doesn’t offer a lot in terms of plot, character development, or dialogue. (Others obviously feel differently.) But I didn’t feel any genuine curiosity from you as to why people still liked it — more of a dismissal of those who do. It’s not like you invited the commentariat to explain what they saw in it that you didn’t, so I’m not 100% surprised that some responded defensively by explaining you’re obviously the stupid one if you don’t get its genius. I thought those responses were unpleasant because they were lecturing you rather than engaging with you, but I didn’t feel like your post exactly invited engagement, either.